Integrated circuits find application in many of today's consumer electronics, such as cell phones, video cameras, portable music players, printers, computers, location based devices, etc. Integrated circuits may include a combination of active devices, passive devices and their interconnections.
On-chip capacitors are critical components of integrated circuits. These capacitors are used for a variety of purposes including bypass and capacitive matching to analog and radio frequency integrated circuit applications. Recently, back-end-of-line (BEOL) vertical natural capacitors (VNCAP) with inter-digitated metal structures have emerged as an attractive option for advanced CMOS and BiCMOS RF technologies because conventional planar capacitors such as metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors require extra process steps and masks. However, as technology continues to advance, VNCAP structures with increasing unit capacitance and improving quality factor are desired.
Accordingly, designers have begun to exploit the intra-metal capacitance of VNCAP structures by utilizing the smallest length width and space design rules to increase the unit capacitance of the VNCAP structure. Unfortunately, with the integration of low and ultra-low dielectric constant materials within BEOL processes (e.g., to reduce RC delay), the gain in intra-metal capacitance is reduced significantly, even when minimum design rule metal lines are fabricated.
Thus, a need still remains for a reliable integrated circuit system, method of fabrication, and device design, wherein the integrated circuit system exhibits improved VNCAP reliability performance, increased unit capacitance, decreased resistance, and/or increased quality factor. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.